Payback at the Polls
By Robert Scheer
Ttuthdig: November 3, 2010
Let's not shoot the messenger. Yes, the tea party victors are a mixed bag
espousing often contradictory and at times weird positions, the source of
their funding is questionable and their proposed solutions are vague and at
times downright nutty. But they represent the most significant political
response to the economic pain that has traumatized swaths of the nation at a
time when so-called progressives have been reduced to abject impotence by
their deference to a Democratic president.
Barack Obama deserved the rebuke he received at the polls for a failed
economic policy that consisted of throwing trillions at Wall Street but
getting nothing in return. His amen chorus in the media is quick to blame
everyone but the president for his sharp reversal of fortunes. But it is not
the fault of tea party Republicans that they responded to the rage out there
over lost jobs and homes while the president remained indifferent to the
many who are suffering.
At a time when, as a Washington Post poll reported last week, 53 percent of
Americans fear they can't make next month's mortgage or rent payment, the
president chirped inanely to Jon Stewart that his top economics adviser,
Lawrence Summers, who was paid $8 million by Wall Street firms while
advising candidate Obama, had done a "heckuva job" in helping avoid another
Great Depression. What kind of consolation is that for the 50 million
Americans who have lost their homes or are struggling to pay off mortgages
that are "underwater"? The banks have been made whole by the Fed, providing
virtually interest-free money while purchasing trillions of dollars of the
banks' toxic assets. Yet the financial industry response has been what Paul
Volcker has called a "liquidity trap"-denying loans for business investment
or the refinancing necessary to keep people in their homes.
Instead of meeting that crisis head-on with a temporary moratorium on
housing foreclosures, as more than half of those surveyed by the Post
wanted, the president summarily turned down that sensible proposal. Instead
he attempted to shift the focus to his tepid health care reform and was
surprised that many voters didn't think he did them a favor by locking them
into insurance programs not governed by cost controls. Health care reform
was viewed by many voters with the same disdain with which they reacted to
the underfunded and unfocused stimulus program. Neither seems relevant to
turning around an economy that a huge majority feels is getting worse,
according to Election Day exit polls.
That is a problem that is not obvious to the power elites whom the leaders
of both political parties serve or to the high-paid media pundits who cheer
them on. The tea party revolt, ragged as it is, fed on a massive populist
outrage that so-called progressives had failed to respond to because of
their allegiance to Obama. As a result the Democrats squandered the hopes of
their base, which rewarded the party with a paltry turnout
But it now remains for the tea party victors to prove that they are a viable
alternative, or by the next election they too will find that their base of
support has evaporated. This should be of great concern to the libertarian
wing of that movement, which scored a considerable victory and a
much-enhanced national presence with Rand Paul's Senate victory in Kentucky.
Will he stick to his promise to hold the Federal Reserve accountable and
oppose the continuing favors to Wall Street that he has blasted as "a
transfer of wealth from those who have earned to those who have squandered"?
The tea party is now in the awkward position previously occupied by the
Obama hope crusade of having to deliver and will suffer a similar political
fate if it fails to deal with the economic crisis. In particular, the
Republicans who will control the House, thanks to the tea party, must come
up with proposals to solve the housing crisis or they will stand exposed as
political opportunists who intend to exploit rather than deal with the
economic anxiety felt not only by their base but much of the country.
Some Democratic leaders will urge Obama to follow President Bill Clinton's
lead after his party's electoral reversal in the 1994 election and move even
further to the right to strengthen his prospects for re-election. It was
that opportunistic shift by Clinton that led to his signing off on the
radical deregulation of the financial industry that caused the economic
meltdown. If Obama follows such advice it will spell further disaster for
the nation.
***
http://www.thenation.com/blog/155701/why-democrats-will-win-california
Why the Democrats Will Win in California
Jon Wiener
The Nation: November 1, 2010
When the votes are counted on Tuesday night in California, Democrats will
easily sweep the top contests. Senator Barbara Boxer is likely to defeat
challenger Carly Fiorina, 51-46 percent (Nate Silver's projection at
538.com), and last week's California Field poll shows Democrat Jerry Brown
ahead of Republican Meg Whitman in the gubernatorial race by ten points.
Across the nation, the Republicans have a better-than-even chance of winning
fifty seats held by Democrats-but none of those seats are in California.
Why are the Republicans doing so badly in California, when they are
anticipating sweeping victories so many other places?
It's not "the economy, stupid." Yes, the rule in politics is that the
unemployment rate is the most powerful predictor of incumbent approval
ratings. But that's not true in California, which has the third-highest
unemployment rate in the nation-officially 12.4 percent (while the nation as
a whole is at 9.2 percent).
It's not campaign funding. Yes, the rule in politics is that the candidate
with the most money wins. But Whitman has spent $141 million on her
campaign, outspending Brown four to one.
It's not the candidates. Yes, Whitman looks weak now. But just a month ago
she was tied with Brown. And Boxer was considered "beatable" a few months
ago, when her disapproval ratings were slightly higher than her approval
ratings.
The best explanation: Democrats remain strong in California because
"demography is destiny." That's what Harold Meyerson says-he writes a column
for the op-ed pages of the Washington Post and the LA Times.
"The electorate in California is the least white of any state, except
Hawaii," Meyerson said in a recent interview. "That matters, because the
Republicans have a genius for alienating voters of color."
The Republican Party is increasingly a party of white people-and that,
Meyerson says, "is death in California." And although the Democrats in
Congress have been, frankly, bad on immigration reform, the Republicans have
been a lot worse: for them, "you're a criminal suspect if you look Latino."
The only Republican to win a top statewide office in California in the past
fifteen years is Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the only reason he won was that
he didn't have to run in a Republican primary-he won the recall vote against
Democrat Grey Davis in 2003. Republican primaries compel Republican
candidates to move to the right-and, Meyerson says, "to say things that are
a disaster with the Latino community."
California is exceptional also because the share of workers who are white
and working class is much lower than the share in the Midwestern states,
where the Democrats face big losses. While Obama has "a low cultural
affinity with those voters," Meyerson says, the way to reach them has been
through an economic appeal-but there has not been enough in the Obama
economic program to convince those voters that he is their economic
champion.
In the past, unions made the case to their members that the Republicans
would be worse-but in the private sector union membership is down to 7
percent of the work force, so the Democrats don't have much to push back
with. But in California, unions are stronger than most other states.
The big change began in the early 1990s, when aerospace collapsed in
California. That led to a major out-migration of the white working class. At
the same time there was a major in-migration of Latinos.
The result is that, in the last four years the Democrats have addded a
million new voters in California, while the Repulicans have lost 200,000. As
of September 3, the official count lists 44 percent of the state's
registered voters as Democrats, while only 31 percent were Republicans. So
the GOP will be celebrating in a lot of states on Tuesday night, but not in
California.
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